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Tuesday, 28 June 2016

RIP Benoîte Groult (1920-2016)

Christopher Long in Normandy kindly alerted me to an obituary in The Times of London for French journalist, writer and feminist activist Benoîte Groult, who died in Hyères a week ago, aged 96.

Born in Paris on January 31,
1920, Groult co-wrote three books with her
younger sister Flora (see photos below, sharing a Hermes 3000 portable typewriter) before branching out on her own as an author in 1972.

Benoîte published 20 novels and many essays on feminism.

The New York Times also ran an obituary, written by Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura. Here is an edited version:

Benoîte
Groult became a leading French feminist and writer in the second half of
her life, drawing wide attention with a sexually daring novel that explored an
unlikely love affair between a Parisian intellectual and an uneducated Breton
fisherman. Groult’s novel Les
Vaisseaux du Cœur (Salt on Our Skin), published in 1988, was branded
pornographic in some literary circles because of its vivid depictions of an
extramarital affair and female sexuality. The book, set in France in the 1960s,
examines the complex emotional dynamics of the couple’s relationship in which
their raw desire for each other cannot overcome the wide social divide between
them. They each end up marrying someone from a similar background yet they
continue their affair for four decades. In 1992 the novel was made into a film,
directed by Andrew Birkin and starring Greta Scacchi and Vincent D’Onofrio. It
was released in the United States as Desire.

Some feminists criticised the
novel, but many readers viewed the protagonist’s sexual escapades as an
expression of a liberated modern woman. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies
worldwide and was translated into 27 languages. “It’s unacceptable to tell
yourself that during 50 years - half a lifetime or longer - you won’t begin a
love affair, you won’t live out the first minutes of desire or deny yourself an
exciting sexual encounter in a train or on a plane,” Groult said in an
interview that was included as a chapter in her 2008 autobiography, My Escape. (The title, she said, was a nod to her emancipation from the constraints of
marriage and social conventions driven by men.)

Michel Piccoli as Pierre Bérard and Romy Schneider as Hélène Haltig in a scene from The Things of Life, a 1970 French film directed by Claude Sautet and based on Paul
Guimard's 1967 novel. Guimard was Groult's fourth and last husband.

By her own account Groult was
a late bloomer, as both an author and a feminist. Having taught Latin and worked
in radio while raising children, she was in her 40s when she began a writing
career and in her 50s when she embraced feminism. But once she took up those
pursuits, she went all out, proving to be a prolific writer and an ardent
activist, campaigning against female genital mutilation and other abuses. She was
55 when her book Ainsi Soit-Elle (loosely translated as As She Is) was
published in 1975. It became an instant best seller in France (it was never
published in English) and sealed Groult’s reputation as a leading
feminist. The book explored the history of women’s rights as well as misogyny and
violence against women, including sexual mutilation, which she wrote about after
encountering it on a visit to Burkina Faso, then called Upper Volta. She went on
to write Salt on Our Skin when she was 65; her last book, Ainsi Soit Olympe
de Gouges, was published when she was 93. That last book explored women’s rights
during the French Revolution, centring on the early French feminist Olympe de
Gouges, who was guillotined in 1793 for challenging male authority. In 1791 de
Gouges had published, as a pamphlet, a declaration of women’s rights
(Déclaration Des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne).

Groult published
more than 20 novels as well as many essays on feminism. She also helped found a
short-lived feminist monthly, F magazine. She was made an officer of the French
Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order for military and civil excellence,
this year.

Groult attributed her belated awakening to feminism to her
“bluestocking” Roman Catholic upbringing, which she said had given her few
female role models. “I discovered that freedom isn’t just picked up naturally,”
she wrote in her autobiography. “It’s something you have to learn, day after
day, and very often painfully.” For that “apprenticeship,” she added, “I needed
other women, those models who had been carefully hidden from me during the
course of my education.”

Married women, Groult wrote, were in a particularly poor
position to lead an effective fight for equality. “When the ‘oppressor’ is your
lover and the father of your children and often the principal purveyor of the
funds, freedom becomes a complex and risky undertaking,” she wrote in her
autobiography. “So much so that many women prefer security, even under
supervision, to the hazards of freedom.” In a interview with the newspaper Ouest-France, Groult reflected on her
novel about Olympe de Gouges. She was asked what advice that feminist would have
for women today. “She would have said: ‘Don’t get married, it’s not worth
divorcing. Stay free and write what you want, in words that are yours,’” she
replied. But many women, she added, would find that advice difficult to follow, even today. Olympe de Gouges could have avoided the guillotine and chosen a safer
but oppressed life, Groult said. Yet she “braved all the conventions, and
God knows that was hard.”

Kia Ora!

Tapping gingerly. Sunday morning, coming down.
Might be my third or fourth attempt to establish a blog. Steeled to make it work this time. All about typewriters. Typewriters in Australia. Ergo, "oz.Typewriter", something a bit different. Please enjoy.